Leave. It. Alone.

Do not "cut it back".

Simply break off the faded blooms. Then, leave it alone. Your landscape maintenance people will kill the Duchesse, if they keep doing this. Tea and China roses need to build up a twiggy superstructure.

In a few years, begin to prune lightly by removing dead growth ONLY.

I am no authority but I predict the answers you'll get are going to be on the lines of,

1. for the love of dog, stop pruning them! You may actually kill them, hacking them back like that. Teas, I gather, are not overly keen on being pruned like more modern roses which were bred to bloom on longer stems and to bounce back from cutting them off.

2. That red growth looks normal to me - many roses, particularly teas, produce red or even plum coloured new growth.

3. Not sure what you mean about above the ground watering - do you mean sprinklers vs drip hose? I think water is water, particularly in a dry area, but you waste less with drip irrigation or soaker hoses.

4. Yes, like most plants they will grow and bloom better if fed, but it's not totally necessary to survival where you are. People who live closer to you will have better advice as to what is the best value/easiest options for your area.

5. The good news is, people online here are very helpful about answering questions and there are people who have a wealth of knowledge, decades of it, and professional expertise, and are happy to share it. I was at your point a short while ago and people here have been very kind and generous with my new rose grower questions!

Hopefully you'll be able to enjoy your roses even more with their help.

Amen, Jeri! Cozypalmer, please, DO NOT LET THEM CUT THE ROSES BACK. They're mistreating them...I'd call it abuse. Teas are a *completely* different beast than hybrid teas, and even hybrid teas wouldn't appreciate being "cut back" after every bloom cycle. It depletes their energy having to regrow leaves and cane, and its takes at least 35 healthy leaves to produce ONE bloom. All that needs to be done is to "dead head", snipping off the spent blooms, and it should be done often, but at least every time a bloom cycle finishes. At most, cut down past the first set of leaves below the bloom, but NO MORE. Like Jeri said, teas don't form the stout canes of hybrid teas, they make a framework of twiggy growth. Speaking of growth, the red leaves are normal for many teas. There are just a LOT of them right now because they're trying to replace what got hacked off.

The Duchess will never be a vertical, stand up, stick in the ground like a hybrid tea, and I suspect that's what your lawn guys are expecting by pruning it (ruthlessly). As for the floppy necks, that's quite normal for teas, and the nodding blooms are part of the romantic look we value so much in teas. Think of her as a SHRUB, not a rose, and you'll be OK, lol.

As for watering, the common wisdom is to water from below, at the base of the plant. But the Duchess in general is pretty healthy, and whatever you're doing water-wise the leaves look gorgeous, so keep doing it :)

The plants look vigorous (for now!), so if you're fertilizing, it's enough. If not, fertilize in Spring after the first flush of bloom, then lightly again after each bloom cycle. I'm not sure how harsh your winters are, but HERE, in Z7, I withhold fertilizer (and water less than normal) starting 6-8 weeks before first frost, in hopes I can force semi-dormancy and ripening of the newest growth (teas never really go dormant, but I try!).

As for where you could have gone to get answers...you're there, lol. This is THE best place to take your questions. One caveat: the best source of info even here is from someone local to you, or who lives in a very similar climate, since no rose (even Knockouts) does well EVERYwhere, and some roses will be better for you than others. But the Duchess is well-known and well-loved, and well-understood, so you can even take my word for it, lol.

John

i'm suffering from the same compulsion to trim down these tea canes so glad to see all these "don't prune it" answers

You have a design problem in your hands, namely that you can't have beds of DdB if you treat those roses right. You will have DdB hedgerows squeezed in between those boxwood rows... Too many DdBs in there unless this is the effect you want to achieve. Maybe you could relocate a couple of plants elsewhere?

Oh, Jackie, why don't you just go ahead and brag, why doncha? lol. That's gorgeous. My DdB will never be that lush.

Yup -- Jackie's DdB is a textbook example of what that rose can be. Should be. WOW.

And yes -- I didn't address the red leaves and canes. AIN'T THEY GORGEOUS?!!! That beautiful new growth should make your heart beat faster, just to see it.

Jeri, yes, I love, love, love the new red growth, but around here you have to give it all a second look because of RRV :P It's only after the leaves fully unfurl that I can breathe easy.

Kinda takes the joy and appreciation right out of it.

Oh, John, I really do understand. I'm just grateful that I don't have RRV to contend with. It's bad enough to know that Chilli Thrips are inexorably moving North.

I actually gasped when I saw the picture. I agree with what others have said. I have DdB. Now I do some pruning on her because I foolishly listened to someone who said it was a 'smallish' tea. But what I do is thin it out without cutting it down, if that makes sense. Mine never lost its leaves this winter so was very full and bushy this spring. Since it's right by my front porch, I had to do something so I removed canes that were infringing on the walkway from their base. I didn't change the height, in fact, I am trying to train some of the canes up the porch post.

Can I ask how many plants are in that bed? I think I see six. I think you can take out 3 and let three stay and let them do their thing.

I have twice known landscape maintenance gardeners who went out of their way to learn how to care for roses -- and the difference between types of roses with regard to care. Those people could command a significantly higher fee, from homeowners who wanted things done right.

But for the most part, these weekly-visit maintenance gardeners are really good at mowing the lawn, and a disaster for just about everything else. The smart homeowner will tell them to leave the roses alone, and stick with mowing the lawn.

Tea Roses, in particular, don't take much maintenance. Save yourself a lot of grief. Make the roses your project, and leave the Mow 'n Blow guys to their mowing and blowing.

Deadheading of Tea Roses can well be done near twilight, as the air begins to cool, with a chllled glass of white wine in hand. It also gives you a chance to get to know your hummingbirds and (at my house) lizards.

I'll have to try that twilight & glass of wine approach.

When I was a small child, my Grandmother taught me to deadhead roses. You snapped the faded blooms off at (what she did not call) the abcission point.

Then, the ARS wallahs taught me that my Grandmother knew nothing, and was all wrong (tho she grew beautiful roses all those years).

Then, I figured out that the ARS wallahs were not growing the sort of rose I had, nor even the ones my Grandmother had, so I tossed their advice out the window, and have been happy ever since.

Yes, that's deadheading. The other thing is called pruning in my book..

Cozypalmer,

Where at in Dallas? I'm located there as well. Shoot me an email if you'd like and we can talk about the roses.